Opportunity Preview

LIFEx: A User-Friendly Software to Support Radiomic and AI Studies in Multimodal Imaging

Technology

Its user-friendly interface and predefined protocols makes it accessible to non-computer specialists

Background

Radiomics and AI-assisted medical image analysis are gaining considerable interest in medical imaging. Many development frameworks are available for conducting radiomic and AI based image analysis, yet they require some programming knowledge.

Technology Overview

Institut Curie has developed a unique user-friendly software called LIFEx ((Local Image Feature Extraction) enabling calculation of several hundreds of conventional, textural and shape indices from medical images (PET, SPECT, MRI, CT, Ultrasound) in DICOM format (+ other formats, Nifti, BMP, TIF, JPG, PNG).

The technical design of this software is based on a main core of functionalities, including:

  • A robust and diversified reader of medical images
  • A simple yet comprehensive image viewer
  • A multitude of tools for image manipulation
  • A viewer and region of interest (ROI) definition tool is fully integrated into the image viewer
  • A multitude of tools for ROI manipulation
  • A variety of images and ROI savings in different formats.

On this solid basis, dedicated functionalities are developed and added as plugins to the application. In particular, they allow the calculation of radiomic features of texture, tumour/tissue heterogeneity, total metabolically active tumour volume in whole body imaging, kinetic analysis (PET compartmental analysis protocol), image annotation (labelling protocol), perfusion parameters from MRI, and others.

The software is available for internal research purposes only via the website.

Further Details:

  • C Nioche, F Orlhac, S Boughdad, S ReuzĂ©, J Goya-Outi, C Robert, C Pellot-Barakat, M Soussan, F Frouin, and I Buvat. LIFEx: a freeware for radiomic feature calculation in multimodality imaging to accelerate advances in the characterization of tumor heterogeneity. Cancer Research 2018; 78(16):4786-4789

Stage of Development

LIFEx v25.06.1 now available

Software developed in the Java language and compatible with Linux, Mac, and Windows operating systems, with a specific installer on each system.

Benefits

  • All-in-one tool for radiomic analysis
  • Automatic calculation of radiomic features
  • No programming skills required: LIFEx has been especially designed for radiologists, nuclear medicine physicians, oncologists, and scientists involved in in vivo medical imaging
  • Graphical user interface included
  • Interoperability
  • Robustness validated on a large variety of image formats by many international users (>7000); numerous publications by users (900 as of 2025-01)

Applications

  • Radiomics and AI-assisted medical image analysis
  • Imaging biomarkers development
  • Multimodal imaging analysis

Opportunity

Licensing opportunities to grant additional rights to use LIFEx (use in collaborative research, use in service provision or integration into a product, ability to communicate on LIFEx results, etc)